RIKEN

One major challenge in stem cell research has been to reprogram differentiated cells to a totipotent state. Researchers from RIKEN in Japan have identified a duo of histone proteins that dramatically enhance ...

Only a few elements in the periodic table are inherently magnetic. Iron is perhaps the best known, but cobalt and nickel also exhibit this type of ferromagnetism. Scientists have recently discovered, however, ...

On 11 November 2011, astronomers witnessed a distant star erupt in an incredibly powerful explosion. An international research team including Mikio Morii and colleagues from the MAXI Team at the RIKEN Global ...

Cytokinins are plant hormones that help to coordinate plant growth and development in response to different environmental triggers. They primarily differ from one another in their 'side-chains'—chemical ...

The contents of plant cells undergo continuous mixing by a process known as cytoplasmic streaming. Yet although this process was discovered more than 200 years ago, its exact purpose has remained unclear. ...

Solid catalysts based on precious metals, such as palladium, are widely used in industry to promote a range of chemical reactions. Finding ways to minimize the consumption of expensive catalytic materials, ...

The transformation of infrared light to a different wavelength, such as visible light, is important in many applications. Some of the most efficient semiconductor lasers operate in the infrared region of ...

Although much is known about atoms and their nuclei, scientists continue to make surprising discoveries as they probe the properties of some of the more exotic isotopes. Pieter Doornenbal from the RIKEN Nishina ...

Static models of gene regulation networks are inevitably oversimplified, indicating how one gene specifically switches certain target genes on while turning others off. However, the reality is much more dynamic ...

Many newly synthesized proteins undergo a sequence of enzymatic modifications that enable them to do their jobs better. This process occurs within a series of membrane-bound structures called 'cisternae' ...

Transistors are one of the most important devices in electronics and lie at the heart of modern computing. The progressive miniaturization of transistors is rapidly approaching the atomic scale, where even ...

The grass species known as the purple false brome, Brachypodium distachyon, has great potential as a model plant for research due to its short generation time, small size, small genome and ease of breeding. ...

Pulses of light are very useful for probing the inner workings of atoms, molecules and solids. Eiji Takahashi and co‐workers from the RIKEN Center for Advanced Photonics, in collaboration with the Center ...

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland is best known for its discovery of the Higgs boson, formed during collisions between bunches of protons ...